Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a microscope system that generates a stitched image in which a plurality of images are stitched, and a method for deciding the stitched area.
Description of the Related Art
In the field of the microscope, a technique to generate a wide-field image (hereinafter, described as a stitched image) that captures the image of a wider area than the field of view of the apparatus, by stitching a plurality of images that capture different areas of the sample.
In this technique, the higher the power of the objective lens that obtains the plurality of images (hereinafter, described as element images), the higher the resolution of the generated stitched image. Meanwhile, the higher the power of the objective lens, the narrower the field of view of the apparatus, increasing the number of the element images, and therefore the generation of the stitched image takes time.
A technique related to the technical challenge as described above is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2004-101871. The photographing apparatus for a microscope image disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2004-101871 divides image information of a low-power field of view size obtained with a low-power objective lens into pieces image information of a high-power field of view size corresponding to the field of view size of a high-power objective lens, checks whether there is a sample image in the respective piece of image information of the high-power field of view size, and obtains high-definition image information by the high-power objective lens only for the high-power field of view size part that is found to have the sample image.
Therefore, by using the technique disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2004-101871, the number of element images obtained by the high-power objective lens may be reduced.